Chapter 1: The Urge to Fly
Jessika Hawkwings whirled and smashed fi rst one and then her second
truncheon towards her enemy’s face, but he was too quick, bringing
up his heavy staff with strong arms and absorbing the impact of her
strikes. She kept turning, letting the strength slip from her attacks as
soon as she saw that he would block them. She stepped past him at an
angle, pivoting, using the rapid rotation of her body to fuel the power
of her next strikes, and angled them low, towards his legs, bending her
knees, adding the force of gravity to her strikes and dropping down to
thwack solidly into his right shin. She turned her pivot and descent into
a shoulder roll, getting out of range of retaliatory staff strikes and coming
back to her feet behind him.
“Ow,” her enemy objected. “Alright, I yield. You’ve broken my knee.”
“Well, I would have,” she agreed, “if you hadn’t been wearing those
guards.”
Rikah Hawkdare bent down and rubbed his leg inside the padded
wooden shin guards.
“I still felt it,” he complained. “You’re just too quick.”
Jessika forced herself not to smile much at the compliment. “If you’d
gotten even one strike in, or if you’d managed to keep your defense perfect
until I ran out of energy, you would have whacked me fi rst.”
“I don’t think you ever run out of energy.”
She patted herself on the chest. “Lots of running up and down stairs
makes for a strong heart.”
“Yeah, and steady all day work in the fi elds doesn’t do that as much.”
She walked up to him and chucked him on the biceps with her
knuckles. “But it gives you all these big muscles.”
“Yeah, I’m a draft horse and you’re a speedy little racing horse.”
Rikah went to put his staff on the pair of hooks in the wall meant
for holding it. The griffins had built this sparring room for the human
children of the Aerie a few years ago, when they’d started to complain
about not having a place to sharpen their fighting skills for the day they
retook the kingdom they’d been born in. The room was big enough for
running about during a fight, but not so big it couldn’t be given a little
heating in winter. Like nearly all the structures in the Aerie, it was built
of stacked and mortared stones and had no windows, but there were
air holes for ventilation and magical lights to keep the room as bright
as day.
Jessika didn’t leave her truncheons behind; she’d taken to carrying
them with her nearly everywhere she went. The griffins had very little
metal, so a sword was too much to ask for. Initially she’d trained with
a staff, but as she’d grown up she’d been more inclined to fight swiftly
and agilely. A big staff was too heavy for her, and once she tried using
two smaller sticks instead, she’d given the staff to Rikah—and dragooned
him into being her sparring partner most of the time.
Kassandra Hawksky wouldn’t touch any weapon these days, and
preferred avoiding fights altogether. Karolan Hawkrain carried only
a short knife, but he had burgeoning magical abilities, and Jessika assumed
that he would learn to use those for any fighting that had to
be done. His teacher, Thornfire, didn’t use his magic offensively very
much—at least not that Jessika has seen—but Thornfire was a griffin,
and had a wicked hooked bill and sharp claws and talons, which were
what he usually relied upon in a fight.
“I want a bath,” Jessika commented. “You should get one, too. You
smell like the draft horse you resemble.”
“Like you know what a horse smells like,” Rikah teased back. “Let’s go.”
The sparring room adjoined the set of caves and buildings used by
the Hawk Line in South-scree Aerie. A few twisting stairs and hallways
brought the two young Hawks to their quarters where they grabbed
fresh clothes and towels. They then made their way down a good number
more stairways and naturally inclined cave floors to a small room
deep below the ones the feathered members of the Hawk Line used.
Griffins rarely bathed in water: usually only in summer, out in the
rivers and waterfalls around the slopes of the mountain where they
made their home. The rest of the time they took dust baths and fastidiously
cleaned each other’s feathers by preening. Soap was unheard of,
but they did put into their big communal dust baths certain crushed
herbs that helped prevent feather mites and other unwelcome parasites.
Jessika wouldn’t say that griffins had a bad smell, but they always had
a definite scent of griffin about them. It was nowhere near as bad as unwashed
human, however.
This cave had been discovered and developed after the children had
come to South-scree to stay, some ten years ago. Although water could
be heated on a fire or by a griffin mage, that took the energy and attention
of a mage or the consumption of more wood than anyone wanted
to use up above the tree line. This little cave had been carved out by an
underground spring and the water was warm. There hadn’t been much
water there to begin with, but a magical artifact called the Moonstone
had been installed in the room, and what had been a pool that wouldn’t
reach even Karolan’s knees was now deep enough to walk into up to
Rikah’s waist.
Starbright had given the midwinter gift of using some earth magic to
shape the rock into seats around where the water bubbled up, so Rikah
and Jessika could strip off and comfortably sink into water up to their
necks. A basket at the side of the room held soap traded for at a human
village and Jessika tossed a piece to Rikah. They scrubbed up, the dirty
water being carried out a rough, natural hole at one side of the chamber,
although they had needed to brick it smaller once the potential pool
volume had been increased. Clean, they both leaned back against the
shaped stone, letting the mild heat of the water soak into them.
“We should move the Sunstone down here and heat up the water,”
Rikah murmured.
“We need it up there to keep us warm in winter. You know that,”
Jessika grunted back.
“We could move it down here for the summer.”
Jessika didn’t reply. Sure, they could, but who wanted to carry a
big rock up and down all those staircases twice a year to just make the
water a bit warmer during the warm season?
“Wings, how long are we going to keep practicing fighting—and
waiting?” Rikah said into the silence.
“I don’t know,” she whispered back. “I’m scared, I guess, and I don’t
know how to start.”
“We should talk to Mother about it?”
Mother: the Hawkmother, real name of Hawkwind, of course was
not their real mother. Their mothers, fathers, siblings, and everyone
else had died when Northnest had been conquered, as far as they
knew. Rikah, Jessika, Karolan, and Kassandra were only alive because
Hawkwind had managed to escape with them. The conquerors of
Northnest had held power for over ten years now, unless something
had happened to unseat them, but even if it had it was unlikely word
would have reached the griffin Aeries.
“I suppose that’s it,” she said mainly to herself. “We don’t know
what’s going on down there now. None of us have been back to
Northnest. We’ll need to go scout it out.”
“Go there?” Rikah echoed, sounding incredulous.
“Of course go there,” Jessika retorted. “How are we going to take
back our kingdom without going there? Do you think we can just tell
all the griffins of South-scree to go attack everyone in Northnest who
looks threatening?”
“No, of course not, that’s not what I meant,” Rikah countered. “I
guess I’m scared, too. I don’t want to go there.”
“It’s our home. We have to go take it back.”
“You want to be Queen of Northnest.”
Jessika crossed her arms. “Not necessarily. I mean, yeah, maybe, if
everything works out, and the people want me.”
She turned, pushing herself out of the water and staring to dry off.
In the glow of a basket of magic stones hanging from the ceiling, she
knew Rikah would be able to clearly see the tattoo on her back, of golden
wings. He was probably staring at it. None of the other three human
children had it: only she. It was a tattoo given to everyone born
to the royal family of Northnest. Jessika had been the child princess,
third born, never likely to become the Queen, but the rest of her family
was dead now. Hawkwind had rescued her only by chance, when she’d
grabbed the only live children remaining in the nursery.
Jessika was sixteen years old now, a year older than all the other
children. Griffins considered fifteen years old to be when an individual
became an adult. Perhaps it was time for Jessika to do what it seemed
she’d been intending to do ever since she realized that her home country
was taken and her family dead: retake it.
She pulled on her clothing, all of which she’d sewn herself. Griffins
didn’t wear clothing, but they did make a little cloth, and when they
worked leather they used sharpened bone needles and twine. Based on
that example and what few human clothes she’d had access to, Jessika
had set herself to making all of them new clothing. Over the years she’d
gotten quite skilled at it.
Dressed now, she turned to look at Rikah.
“I will talk to Mother about it,” she said. “It’s time to start planning